Electoral politics and lived realities

I21

I believe in a diversity of tactics. I believe that electoral politics is necessary. I hate it….So even when I thought it was the right thing to do I hated it. I do not like electoral politics but I consider electoral politics to be important particularly given the fact that as the left we're so fucking weak. So to me it's an arrogant position to dismiss electoral politics because what it does is to dismiss the day-to-day lives of working people and poor people.

Values in action

I7

We're not as good at making our messages attractive….People like to talk about their values and people make their political decisions, whether it's voting or...what they're engaged in, what they choose to support, and they do that based on values. They don't do that based on solid analysis for the most part….we've come to a point in human history, I guess, in our civilization, where it's not about solidly analyzing everything unless it has to do with you personally, unless it's like your RRSPs, then you do it, but in terms of your politics people vote their values.

Anarchism and radical social change

I12

Eventually I came to [anarchism]... and a complete rejection of the entire system and seeing its destruction as the only possible solution. It didn't seem like it was hierarchical in any way. It didn't seem to be intimidating in the sense that you had to prove yourself to be a part of it or climb any kind of ranks or whatever, or find a place to be. You were just an individual making your own decisions and individual actions for what you saw as a potential for change.

Fight to survive

I9

People talk a lot in certain activist circles of non-violence, civil disobedience, which is a disruption but what's to happen if and when the police and military are actually pushing people down, even killing people? At what point are people going to fight? If you just say, ‘well, never,’ then that doesn't look very good and I don't think it's even possible for people to just resign themselves to that, people won't. People will fight to survive.

Manipulating choices

I26

I volunteered with an underground midwife....she still caught babies, still did the exact same job...but there was no funding for it, women still paid her out of pocket. So where did that take me? I guess that was a turning point in my politics because it really made me think not just about women's choices and how women conceptualize those choices and manifest them but how...the broader society manipulates women, or offers certain choices for women.

No going back

I27

I always think it's really exciting when people...move...and I think that the key thing…[is] not necessarily to take them and show them exactly what to do, but [to show them] there's no going back. They're either going to win or they're going to fucking lose and I think that's an important position. To push people out to taking those risks that they wouldn't normally want to take and getting them to feel like that's their decision, feeling empowered, and then creating that contrast, and then there's no going back, you're pretty much taking a leap.

Building autonomous networks

I28

The state is using...these new innovations and technology to encroach upon us and I believe the potential of technology to undermine that and to pose real threats to state and capital are quite acute and I'm interested in building anti-surveillance and anonymity structures online. Housing the technology so that it's not dependent on the structures [that seek to]...capitalize...on those communications technologies....How can we build networks and systems that are completely autonomous that don't rely on those things? But...I'm also constantly questioning these sorts of pursuits...in relation to...climate chaos and the end of energy and so [also] thinking about how technology has a horizon.

Acting to win

I18

The left is very intellectual and we have these complicated explanations for things and I really think we need to boil it down more, without losing the substance of it….I think that the left needs to stop feeling like a perennial loser and start acting more like the obvious winn[ing] choice.

Difference and possibility

I19

I think imagination…[is] the ability to think of something different, to enact something different, to believe that something different is possible.

Care and organizing

I21

I think it's important to nurture people in the political movements that are important to me. So the form is as important as the content. So how we organize, and how we talk to each other, and how we behave is extremely important….a person I truly respec[t] once said to me that [the]...only...criteria for [being] progressive [is] they had to be interested in ideas and care about people and if they didn't have one or the other they were not progressive. So there are a lot of people in our progressive movements who either don't care about people or don't care about ideas...that's what I mean… [by] the converging of the social and the moral.